Monday, July 6, 2015

Alwaght - Professor
Denis Rancourt, a Canadian scholar who was fired from the university
where he was teaching under Israeli lobby pressures, is of the opinion
that everyday should be marked as the International Quds Day, stressing
that world’s nations ought to close ranks against the arrogant powers’
murder campaigns and support popular resistance movements. “Any country that serves US
geopolitical machinations is protected by the US regime, and is thereby
shielded from war crime prosecutions, no matter how horrendous and
obvious its mass murders may be. The history of this pattern is
unambiguous, and the protection typically extends to the economic,
diplomatic, and military spheres. This is especially true for Israel
which is in a symbiotic relation with powerful Israel lobbies in the US,
France, Canada, Australia, … In the UK the domestic Israel lobby is
somewhat kept in check by strong popular activism that impacts electoral
politics,” Dr. Denis Rancourt said in an exclusive interview with
Alwaght news website. He also said that the Saudi regime,
by its actions and alliances, is an integral part of the empire that is
attempting to exterminate Gaza’s life and spirit, and the Saudi regime’s
war crime of aggression against the people of Yemen is most despicable.
Israel is not the only active war criminal aggressor in the region. All
will enjoy immunity under the empire’s disproportionate influence on
world institutions until the newly balanced emerging world has
sufficiently matured.

Alwaght:
In August 1979, the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah
Khomeini declared the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as
International Quds Day, calling on Muslims across the world to mark the
annual occasion by holding street rallies. Millions of people around
the world take to the streets on this day in a show of support for the
people of Palestine, demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of
Palestinian lands. What's your take on International Quds Day?

Rancourt: The International Quds Day
is an important statement of recognition and of profound gratitude
towards all occupied Palestinians who fight back and reject
collaboration with the occupying force. We must honour and celebrate
their inspiring, courageous and tenacious endurance, resistance, and
dignified self-defence. Quds Day is a vital link to the extraordinary
spirit and strength of occupied Palestinians, who are a world treasure
in the global fight against organized oppression and evil. The world
desperately needs Palestinians, and Palestinians need a conscious and
moral world that respects itself enough to actually fight for justice.
Every day must be Quds Day, and we must all be Palestinians. Our
personal actions involving risk must oppose domination in every area of
society, starting close to home in priority, and extending to all the
peoples against which enslavements, genocides and wars have been and are
being perpetrated.

We, free people of the world, owe
much to Palestinians for their stellar and heroic resistance against a
most brutal empire. That empire, which includes my country (Canada) as a
participant in these global crimes, is vicious and immoral. It has
enslaved and exterminated millions and millions of victims on all
inhabited continents, in its insatiable quest for power and material
gain. It strives for and imposes total and uncompromising dominance --
not just dominance over territory and national administrations, but over
peoples and peoples’ minds and spirits also.

Quds Day is a statement that the
dominant global empire will be stopped, and is being stopped, by the
actuated will of people, who do not want to be dominated, by the
actuated will of people who want freedom and influence over their own
communities. Through widespread resistance, a new world is emerging as a
mosaic of collaborating nations that control their own destinies and
associations, and that do not want to be a plantation and killing field
for a global empire. As this new reality is achieved, we must not allow
Israel’s on-going genocide project to be continued any further, and we
must not allow any more nations to be annihilated by total destruction.
We must always stand against the empire’s brutal plans, most visibly,
the on-going murder campaigns against Gaza, Palestine, Yemen, and Syria
in the immediate, while continuing to support resistance in every region
that it is manifested.

Alwaght: Palestinians are
seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West
Bank, East al-Quds (Jerusalem), and the Gaza Strip, and are demanding
that Israeli regime withdraw from the Palestinian territories occupied
in the 1967 Six-Day War. Despite pressures by international rights
bodies, it seems that Tel Aviv doesn't plan to put an end to the
blockade of the Gaza Strip and in fact is benefiting from the
prolongation of the siege. Do you believe that Tel Aviv needs to keep
the siege in place in order to safeguard its own existence and
legitimacy?

Rancourt: Israel’s blockade against
the Gaza Strip, in combination with Israel’s periodic military massacres
of Palestinians in Gaza and all-out destruction of public
infrastructure, is an international crime of the highest order. There is
no rational justification for the blockade against Gaza, unless the
ultimate Israeli goal is progressive genocidal extermination and
evacuation of Gaza. Israel’s policy and practice of periodic military
slaughters and destruction of public and housing infrastructures,
combined with an effectively permanent blockade, can only be objectively
understood as a long-term Israeli goal to annihilate Palestinians. This
is the on-going, systematic, and long-term Israel genocide that is
clear for everyone to see, and that is explicitly managed by Israeli
political and opinion leaders.

Israel’s mass crimes cannot be
justified as part of any legitimate political or military tactic. There
is no realistic existential threat to the Jewish State. Israel is the
regional superpower, with one of the most powerful armies in the world.
Israel’s fabricated myth of an existential threat is untenable in the
face of its history and of the hard evidence. On the contrary, if
anything it is Israel’s power, predatory designs, and influence and
interference in the interest of empire that are a sustained threat to
stability in the region.

There is no sign that enough will
ever be enough. Israel could choose to respect human rights and the
right of return, in negotiating reparations and resource sharing, or it
can continue to practice its criminal campaigns. It has the power to
make those decisions. There is every sign that Israel will never make
just reparation decisions without sufficient global pressure.

Quds Day is one manifestation of a
desire of world citizens to pressure their governments to bring Israel
in line with international norms of decency. Quds Day should not be
solely an expression of “hope” or solely an occasion for spiritual
reflection. In my view, Quds Day also needs to be an affirmation of a
moral contract to act and speak-out to exert needed political influence
for good. When I have been honoured to be a speaker at Quds Day
celebrations, I have expressed this view.

Alwaght: Israeli regime
warplanes pounded residential areas in the Gaza Strip during Tel Aviv's
51-day war, killing and injuring thousands of civilians, mostly women
and children. International rights bodies and the so-called advocates of
democracy and human rights such the US and some Western countries are
privy to the fact that the massacre of innocent people is a crime under
international law. What has turned Israel into an immune regime while it
has repeatedly violated international law by its ongoing atrocities?

Rancourt: Any country that serves US
geopolitical machinations is protected by the US regime, and is thereby
shielded from war crime prosecutions, no matter how horrendous and
obvious its mass murders may be. The history of this pattern is
unambiguous, and the protection typically extends to the economic,
diplomatic, and military spheres. This is especially true for Israel
which is in a symbiotic relation with powerful Israel lobbies in the US,
France, Canada, Australia, … In the UK the domestic Israel lobby is
somewhat kept in check by strong popular activism that impacts electoral
politics.

The UK is an example where
represented active citizens can moderate some of the attempted excesses
of the US regime. In response to such a democratic threat, the US and
Israel have been using regional tensions and hired-thugs such as ISIS to
attempt nation annihilation and dismantling through proxy wars, in
targeted countries where collaborating elites cannot easily be
installed, such as in Iraq and Syria. These fuelled proxy wars are the
most despicable mass crimes imaginable, without declarations of war,
without UN approval, and without the protections of the Geneva Conventions.The Saudi regime, by its actions and
alliances, is an integral part of the empire, the same empire that is
attempting to exterminate Gaza’s life and spirit, and the Saudi regime’s
war crime of aggression against the people of Yemen is most despicable.
Israel is not the only active war criminal aggressor in the region. All
will enjoy immunity under the empire’s disproportionate influence on
world institutions until the newly balanced emerging world has
sufficiently matured.

A similar scenario of
empire-supported fractioning and destruction was partly actuated in the
Ukraine recently. The US regime is enthusiastic about fermenting war in
such a way as to attempt to halt the inevitable global economic
development of independent blocks, such as BRICS. Here and elsewhere,
the empire’s now-common duplicitous use of economic “sanctions” is both
morally criminal, in the potential harm caused to ordinary citizens, and
geopolitically irresponsible, in the potential instability that is
knowingly created. By any objective standard, the empire’s “sanctions”
are mass criminal aggressions.

In view of the emerging world
economic realities, the US regime is a failing empire with
disproportionate military strength, which is a most dangerous situation.
The best we can do in this transition period is to stop the ongoing
nation destructions and genocides. And the best way to do that is to
support the freedom fighters and resistors as much as we can by taking
our governments out of the murderous US-led campaigns of destruction. We
must impose domestic democracy as much as we can, in such a way as to
protect Gaza, Yemen, Syria, and our own oppressed domestic populations
that are needed in the unified struggle for actual democracy. This is
why the present wave of US-empire campaigns of terror and proxy wars are
currently accompanied by the most aggressive attacks against civil
liberties in the US-aligned world seen in many decades, from
criminalizing BDS and criticisms of Israel, to prosecuting thought
crimes of every variety. Independent thought and democracy are the new
undeclared enemies of satellite administrations such as France and
Canada, and in the US itself. Even in Israel now, a world bastion of
freedom of speech, Palestinian national politicians are being summarily
imprisoned. These are all clear signs of a failing empire, and of an
emerging generalized will to resist. More and more, every day is Quds Day.

Soon, I hope, in my naïve view, the
Muslim world will find a way to unite and become the independent and
powerful world leader that it deserves to be. It will further and
effectively reject US regime interference, and any emerging
interference, and it will negotiate and collaborate as an equal in the
world, in the interest of its citizens and their diverse democratic
ambitions. The fall of absolute US domination need not be a hell of
destruction. It can be an occasion for unity and new possibilities. It
can occur as an emergence of justice, with inspired and principled new
and renewed leaders. This can even occur in the US and its satellite
countries if we show these governments the way. Gaza is already
eminently showing the way by its resourcefulness, determination, and
pure courage; by its Sumud [Steadfastness]. Gaza calls for our involvement every day, which must be Quds Day.

Alwaght: Some certain Arab
and Western countries have been always seeking to deflect world's
attention away from the Palestinian Cause which tops the priorities of
the Muslim world. What's your perspective on the issue of Cause of
Palestine and the attempts to put it on the road of oblivion?

Rancourt: The
Zionist project has shown itself to be an expansionist and genocidal
project, rather than a benign national emancipation project. This has
been more than clear to all observers for a long time. Israel is now
seen for what it is: a criminal and rogue state deeply motivated by
racist exceptionalism, with a majority population that apparently wants
to exterminate Palestinians. Israel’s hate is the hate of a genocidal
campaign. It can only be stopped by resisting the campaign and shunning
the murderers. A sufficiently firm treatment of Israel can constrain it
to follow international law, and to accept the needed reparations and
equal-party justice-based negotiations regarding illegally occupied land
and the right of return.

The US regime will continue to
protect Israel’s immunity, even while the genocide is perpetrated, until
the US itself sees Israel’s crimes as an intolerable liability. As the
US Empire fails to maintain absolute dominance, even in its own backyard
and over its own domestic population, it may come to see Israeli crimes
as an intolerable liability. At that point, the US Israel lobby will
also see the light. Therefore, this is a race for the survival of
Palestine. Israel will do everything it can to steal and break Palestine
before the circumstances of the faltering US and an awakening world put
a definitive stop to the genocide. If Israel succeeds, the world will
have lost Palestine, and we all will share responsibility for this
greatest catastrophe. I just don’t know that Palestine can survive
without our own real contributions to the global struggle, but I hope
that Palestine can overcome even our cruel indifference if we cannot be
moved beyond “remembering”.

Dr. Denis
Rancourt was a professor for more than 20 years at the University of
Ottawa, up to the highest rank of Full Professor, until 2009. In the
fall of 2008, he was removed from all teaching duties under the pretext
that he had granted A+ grades to 23 students in one course during the
winter 2008 semester; however, it's quite clear to everybody that his
outspoken criticism of Israel and his pro-Palestinian activism had
triggered his dismissal from the university. Professor Rancourt's
classes were always attended by tens of students and he was considered
as one of the popular university professors at the Faculty of Science.

He has authored more than 100
articles published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, in the
fields of physics, and environmental science. He is currently an
independent social theorist and science critic, author of several social
analysis articles posted on internet venues, and the author of the book
“Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism” (Stairway
Press, 2013). He is an active volunteer with the Ontario Civil Liberties
Association, and an experienced self-represented litigant.Interview by Javad Arab Shirazi